When my husband and I were house hunting, we had a list of wants for our new home. Some of those wants included an updated kitchen and bathrooms; at least one and a half bathrooms; a fireplace; hardwood floors throughout; a deck; an extra bedroom; fresh paint; and essentially needing little to no work. (Really???!! Kind of a tall order for our budget.)
We looked at what felt like a thousand houses, and then reality struck. We realized the perfect house did not in fact exist after all, and we would have to be more waaaay more flexible about what we were looking for.
Then we finally found our house. While it does have a bath and a half, the half is rather inconveniently located in the garage. We did get the fireplace and the deck, though. Fortunately, the upstairs bath is updated, but the kitchen is not. You learn to compromise.
And it had appeared that while the downstairs has hardwoods, the upstairs didn’t. We asked our agent to find out if there were hardwoods beneath the carpets. We were told no. OK, fine. We just figured we would redo the upstairs carpet somewhere down the road.
But after the closing we took another look around the house and realized that two of the upstairs closets had hardwood floors. That didn’t make any sense. Why would the closets have hardwoods but not the rest of the upstairs? So ripped away a corner in one of the bedrooms, to reveal (drumroll please…) hardwood floors! Upon further investigation, we found that all three bedrooms had hardwoods, as did the hallway. This was great news.
Of course, we still haven’t done anything about this revelation (heck, we still haven’t unpacked a number of boxes that are stacked somewhat neatly in the garage). And now our furniture is sitting on top of the carpet, which complicates things a little bit more.
But I am feeling bold, and I have big plans for this weekend—I am going to start ripping up carpet and removing tack strips in the guest room-to-be. I will need a carpet ripper and a pry bar (and probably some patience, something I don’t have a lot of).
Then, instead of refinishing the floors (which will be costly and generate a lot of dust and general disarray) I will get a nice area rug from HomeGoods or TJMaxx—you can get a decent rug there without paying a fortune. Perhaps some day I will have the floors refinished. But for now, this will do.
Michelle
01:08:02 PM on Fri Aug 10 2012
This is exactly the position my husband and I are in! We are going to start house-hunting soon, and have realized we are going to have to compromise quite a bit. While state-of-the-art kitchens and modern updates are not in our budget, I am kind of looking forward to finding that diamond in the rough and making it my own over time. I think it will feel much more personal that way.